When consciousness returned to her, Rebecca found herself thrown into darkness and tied to a chair. Her head was pounding and she could feel something sticky on her neck and cheek. Blood. For the briefest of moments, she couldn’t work out where she was. Then everything came flooding back, the recollections of a nightmare. She remembered meeting Faadi outside the church, and how nervous she had been at seeing him there waiting for her. She remembered how nervous he had been too.

That was where her memories stopped.

She recognised their voices, though she didn’t know why they were doing this to her. All she knew was that she was cold and scared and she wished she hadn’t lied to her mother about where she was going. Her mum would never have allowed her to go out to meet a boy, even though Faadi was the nicest boy anyone could imagine. Now she wished she had just been honest. She would rather have been in her bedroom sulking than here, cast into darkness and not knowing what was happening on the other side of whatever it was they had tied around her eyes.

‘My dad’s a policeman,’ she said, her voice trembling with uncertainty. ‘He’ll know where we are. He won’t let you do this.’

She heard Keeley laugh. She had never liked the girl – there had always been something different about her, as though she thought herself too good to bother with anyone else in their year group – and now Rebecca knew that her instincts had been right. Was she the one who had hit her over the head, or had it been Tyler? Either way, Rebecca felt sick with the pain. But it was nothing compared to the fear that was holding her rigid.

But how had they known where to find her? she wondered. Faadi, she thought, her mind racing now. Was he still here? She couldn’t remember hearing him, not since she’d been hit. Had he run away and left her? Was he a part of all this?

‘You think?’ Tyler said, his voice somewhere near. Then he moved so close she could feel the heat of his breath against her cheek. It made her feel sick. ‘Let’s play a game.’

His voice sounded muffled, as though she was hearing it under water; Rebecca’s ears were still ringing from the blow to the head she had suffered. If her eyes hadn’t been covered and her vision cast into darkness, she would have recognised too that her short-lived unconsciousness had also rendered her sense of sight temporarily impaired. She realised she had never felt scared before, not properly; not like this.

‘I’ll count to three, and after three, one of us is going to touch you. All you have to do is guess which one of us it was. Easy.’

Rebecca felt her tears escape from under the fabric pulled across her eyes. She didn’t like this game. She wanted to go home. She tried to cry out, but whatever was stuffed into her mouth made the sound escape as little more than a muted sob.

‘You like Rebecca, don’t you, Faadi?’

‘Come on,’ Keeley said, her voice cold and hard. ‘Do it. Touch her.’

Knowing she couldn’t free herself, Rebecca’s body tensed, every limb shuddering with fear. Faadi was still there. This couldn’t be happening to her. She had heard about things like this – had seen the stories on TV, things she hadn’t wanted to see – but they didn’t happen round here. They didn’t happen to her.

‘Come on,’ Tyler said, repeating his girlfriend’s words. ‘You like games, don’t you? And all those computer games you play must mean you’re good with your hands.’

Keeley snorted, a horrible sound that pierced the cold air of the room. ‘Show us how good you are,’ she taunted.

The sound of a slap, sudden and sharp, cut through the horrible silence that had fallen over the room. It echoed around them, and Rebecca realised then that they were no longer outside. They were inside the church. She felt nothing when the sound came, but heard a small whimpering noise somewhere else in the room, the sound of a caged animal, trapped and tortured, before a scuffling crossed the floor, the noise falling towards her.

She felt a hand on her arm, shaking, and then a quiet voice that whispered in her ear. ‘I’m sorry.’

Faadi. They were making him do this, she thought. He didn’t want to be there any more than she did. Had they set this all up? Was that why Faadi had looked confused when she had thanked him for inviting her to the party?

He didn’t want to do what they were telling him to. But he was going to do it anyway.

There was a scream of pain, so close it made Rebecca start with fright.

‘Just so you know what’s happening in here,’ Keeley said, the girl’s face so close that Rebecca could feel her hair brushing against her face. ‘Your little boyfriend needs to follow our instructions first time. He hesitated. That’s not in the rules, I’m afraid. There’s been a forfeit.’

Rebecca heard Faadi’s sobs, choked and pained. She tugged at the ties that bound her arms, not knowing what was happening to him but desperate to help him, but she was held fast and had little choice other than to listen to the sound of Faadi’s fear.

‘Now then,’ Keeley said, moving away from Rebecca. ‘Do it.’

Rebecca waited an awful moment, wondering just what they were instructing him to do. Her young mind pictured things she would never have thought it possible to imagine, but suddenly these things were real and they were closer to her than her dad could ever have warned her. He had talked to her about men like this. Women like this, even. She had known not to trust any adult who wasn’t known to her.

But no one had ever told her anything about not trusting other children.

Her body tensed again as she heard a snipping sound. Something cold touched her chest – something hard and metallic – and for a heart-stopping moment she thought it was a knife. Then she realised it was a pair of scissors. Someone was cutting through her coat, exposing her. A sob caught somewhere in her throat, unable to escape.

‘You do it.’

Keeley was talking to Faadi. There was quiet for a moment before the snipping of fabric continued, but it was quickly broken by the sound of Faadi’s tears. It wasn’t his fault, Rebecca told herself, repeating the words in her head over and over like some kind of mantra that might get her through whatever would happen next. He didn’t want to do this; they were making him.

It wasn’t his fault.

She heard a laugh – Keeley again – before everything changed.

The snipping of the scissors stopped.

‘I’m not doing this,’ she heard Faadi say. ‘I’m not like you.’

And then everything happened so quickly.